It was a short step from removing things left lying around to searching for such things, and another short step to making your own opportunities. That was the initiative they’d said he didn’t have at school, wasn’t it? And with the recession deepening and these bloody Poles taking all the jobs round here, you had to do something to survive, didn’t you? He had always been quite a nimble lad — could have been a good gymnast, the PE teachers said, if he’d only been at school more often. If people left windows open, they deserved to suffer and Wayne was just the man to ensure they did.
Success made him bolder. He moved on to better streets and bigger houses. He learned what to take and what to ignore. Money was the best, and after that jewellery. Then silver, particularly if it was fairly portable; he learned to distinguish at a glance between the hallmarked article and the EPNS versions which were hardly worth removing. He knew where to dispose of stuff quickly and profitably; you didn’t get anything like the retail value, but you had to extract a realistic price from crooked dealers for stolen goods.
Boldness can be a valuable quality for felons. It can also be highly dangerous, if it leads them to overreach themselves. Wayne Johnson had passed his driving test at the first attempt. It was the only examination success he had ever had and for a full day it lifted his spirits. He acquired an old van to carry away his booty and moved on to fresh fields and richer pickings. He could go miles from home now, out to the rich suburbs and the last roads before town finally gave way to country.
The road where he had been last night was simply and grandly called The Avenue. Big gardens, with lots of cover for people doing what he did; big houses, with lots of lovely loot for the deserving and resourceful man like him. But possessions made people suspicious, and success had made Wayne careless.
He had watched the elderly couple leave the first big house at the end of the road. There was no burglar alarm visible on the outside of the house and no bell blared when Wayne gained access. The downstairs windows were the original leaded lights from the thirties. They were certainly picturesque, but no match for a strong young man with the heavy old chisel he had found so effective a tool. You had to force entry without much noise. He was into the room at the rear of the house within three minutes, scarcely able to believe his luck that there should be no effective security in a place this size. No need to hurry; the big Merc had plainly been on its way out for the evening.
He took his time assessing this Aladdin’s cave of trophies. His eyes gleamed when his torch flicked over a display cabinet. The silver tea service was solid and a good weight. Regency, probably, his now experienced eye told him. He didn’t bother with the china. It was too fragile to travel easily, and you got disappointingly little for it. But there was a collection of gold and silver snuff boxes on the top shelf. Twelve in all; he put them carefully into the shopping bag he had found behind the kitchen door.
The bottom drawer in the bedroom was where he found the money. Tens and twenties, maybe with the odd fifty among them — there must be hundreds here — all beneath several pairs of neatly folded knickers. The woman must have been concealing this from her husband. Naughty old bag! He resisted the urge to count the notes and moved up the drawers to the top one.
That was where he had his real windfall. A jewellery box, with everything neatly assembled for the discriminating intruder to remove. How very obliging! Diamonds, emeralds, what looked to his experienced but uneducated eye like rubies and sapphires. Genuine stones, he was pretty sure of that. Rings and earrings and three or four brooches. Silly old trout! Some people only learned a lesson the hard way, didn’t they?
There weren’t many dog walkers in the tight little houses in the centre of the town where Wayne Johnson lived. That was probably what made him omit them from his calculations. But The Avenue was a very different place. It was a man walking his Labrador through the scented spring darkness that saw the battered white van in the drive of the solicitor’s house. An odd thing, that, as the house itself seemed to be in darkness. When he heard the sound of the rear door of the van being stealthily opened, the dog walker didn’t intervene; he was observant, not foolhardy. He stilled the soft growl of the Labrador and hastened homewards as fast as his ageing legs would carry him.
He was lucky. And Wayne was unlucky. When the 999 call came through to the police at Oldford, there was a patrol car within half a mile. They arrested Johnson as he eased the van out of the driveway of the big detached house. Caught red-handed, with the evidence neatly stowed behind him in the back of van. Charged, relieved of his laces and his belt and the contents of his pockets, and given a night in the cells to meditate upon the error of his ways. A result, in police terms. Something to throw in the faces of those who said burglary wasn’t taken seriously, in these days of drugs and terrorism.
Wayne Johnson didn’t sleep much. The face of the mother who had warned him against his descent into crime ever since his last days at school kept swimming before him, and his scornful dismissal of her fears kept ringing in his ears. They’d be round to tell her he was in the nick for the night and why. He felt an odd emotion he had not endured since childhood. It took him a little while to recognize it as guilt. In the morning, he managed to down half a piece of bread and most of the mug of strong tea that was brought to him.
The two uniformed cops who interviewed him were truculent. The case was sewn up, whatever attitude this suddenly pitiful creature chose to adopt. Even the cautious boys of the Crown Prosecution Service couldn’t reject this. Plead guilty and throw yourself on the magistrate’s mercy, lad, there’s no other course open to you.
Offer them nothing, Wayne’s previous brushes with the law told him. He couldn’t see any way out of this, but he’d make it as difficult for them as he could, on principle. He knew he was entitled to a brief, and was disappointed when they announced that. No chance of claiming that he’d been deprived of his rights, then. He knew he was going to plead guilty, but told himself stubbornly that a brief might turn up some mitigating circumstance which he couldn’t see for himself. These bloody lawyers cost enough, didn’t they? If the state was stupid enough to pay their exorbitant bills, let them earn their bloody money.
They couldn’t find a lawyer for him, not immediately. One should be available in a couple of hours. He was returned to his cell until then, wondering darkly about some cunning police ploy. The delay was genuine enough, but it was this chance occurrence that delivered him into the hands of the CID.
When he was taken back to the interview room, a keen-looking dark-haired pig said he was Detective Inspector Rushton. He introduced the burly PC Plod-type beside him as Detective Sergeant Hook. After this, they both looked at Wayne for several seconds without words, as though he were a specimen under a microscope that might reward careful study. It was quite unnerving, especially as he was also wondering why simple burglary should interest top brass like this.
Rushton’s opening words did nothing to slow his racing pulses. ‘We’re not interested in the breaking and entering; that’s an open and shut case. You’re going to plead guilty once your brief arrives. We’re interested in you for something much more serious.’ He paused to study Wayne again with that unsmiling, unblinking stare, as if he expected some guilty start to reward him for his attention.
Wayne found it difficult to summon up resistance. ‘You might think you have me banged to rights for breaking and entering. Remains to be seen, that. And you’ll get me to admit to bugger-all else, so don’t think you can build up your clearance figures by pinning some other thing on me.’